What doesa photo printing shop do to print digital photo's
Videot 23 March 2005 10:41:50
I have printed out many digital prints & they have looked great. It's only when you use a large magnifying glass can you see the individual dots from the ink jet printer. For the first time I have had a few digital pictures printed in a shop. When I examined these with the same magnifying glass I was unable to discern any pattern, dots or otherwise on these prints. I was wondering just what the photo shop is doing with the original digital data when its printed.. Are they resampling upwards etc.?
"Videot" <videot@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message news:4241101a$0$5598$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au...>I have printed out many digital prints & they have looked great. It's only> when you use a large magnifying glass can you see the individual dots from> the ink jet printer. For the first time I have had a few digital > pictures> printed in a shop. When I examined these with the same magnifying glass I> was unable to discern any pattern, dots or otherwise on these prints. I > was> wondering just what the photo shop is doing with the original digital data> when its printed.. Are they resampling upwards etc.? Lab printing is a completely different technology to home inkjet printing. your inkjet printer sprays dots of ink onto the paper. it can either put a dot on or leave a spot ink free. All the dots have the same density though. To simulate variations in brightness and colour, it has to change the number of dots it prints in an area, and the colour of those dots, then rely on the eyes and brain to merge those together so we see a photo instead of a bunch of dots. This is why you see resolutions of 1440, 2880, 5760 dpi etc. They need this many dots to be able to simulate an acceptable quality image. Lab printers however, such as fuji frontier, use photographic paper. The same stuff your film prints have been done on for years. This paper uses silver compounds that are sensitive to light, and are then developed in chemicals. The more light that hits the image, the denser the silver image. traditionally, the way film prints were done, was to shine light through the negative onto the paper. In modern digital labs, they shine red, green and blue lasers onto the paper to expose the image. There is no need to make the image up of tiny dots, because they can control the brightness of every individual pixel. because they can create continuous tone images, there are no longer lots of little dots, just smooth toned images. They usually print at about 300 dots per inch, which is equivalent to about 2 megapixels for a 6x4 inch image. 300dpi would look atrocious from an inkjet, but because the lab printer can make every one of those dots in the exact colour, with no gaps between adjacent dots, 300dpi looks perfect from the lab. if the image has less detail than is needed to print at 300dpi in the print size you want, then it is upsampled as needed. in most cases for 6x4 prints it will actually downsample before printing.
Kodakfilm@Gmail.Com 23 March 2005 20:18:25 [ permanent link ]
Something else serious photographers can do. I use Costco's super digital printer for all my digital prints. If you use Photshop CS you can match your prints to their printer by downloading the store's specific printer profile by going to "drycreekphoto.com" which has printer profiles for all sorts of Costco outlets. You select the specific store you use as the profiles may vary.
You now can email your photos [up to 8 X 10 inch prints] to Costco using www.costco.com instead of having to take the media to the actual store. A 4 X 6 print is 17 cents vs. 14 cents if you go to store and use their machine to download your images. The slight difference in cost is more than made up by the cost of gasoline driving there. Unfortunately, you still have to go there to pick up the finished print[s], which are always ready by the next day.
I always use 300 dpi for their digital prints. They are now making up to 12 X 18 inch prints [under $3!!].
You now can email your photos [up to 8 X 10 inch prints] to Costco> using www.costco.com instead of having to take the media to the actual> store. A 4 X 6 print is 17 cents vs. 14 cents if you go to store and> use their machine to download your images. The slight difference in> cost is more than made up by the cost of gasoline driving there.> Unfortunately, you still have to go there to pick up the finished> print[s], which are always ready by the next day.>
I always use 300 dpi for their digital prints. They are now making up> to 12 X 18 inch prints [under $3!!].>
If your Costco is using the Noritsu 3101 printer, its native resolution is 320 ppi rather than 300 ppi. Even when 'all' of the automatics are turned off on these machines at your request, the auto resize is almost always left running. Bottom line is that you're allowing their machine to do a resizing job that Photoshop and many other graphics programs have far better, if slower, algorithms for.
I'm using Costco for exhibition prints that no custom lab in the state has been able to match even at 10 times their price.
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